Impoverished Farm Workers Respond to Need in Haiti
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Union members and other working people across the country are digging deep into their hearts and pockets to provide aid to the victims of the massive earthquake in Haiti. You can take action now to help the Haitian survivors by clicking on the AFL-CIO Haitian Disaster Relief site here.
One of this country’s most impoverished areas—the farm worker community of Immokalee, Fla.—is doing its part. Enlisting its low-power radio station, Radio Conciencia, members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) launched a donation drive. They will send all donations to the Red Cross.
The CIW website says the response has been overwhelming.
Seeing farm workers—who are themselves suffering unemployment and economic crisis due to two weeks of freezing temperatures that destroyed crops across south Florida—stream into the office with water, clothes, and canned food is nothing short of inspiring.
Cast Your Vote for ‘Scrooge of the Year’
It’s the holiday season and time once again to say “bah humbug” to the most cold-hearted and greedy CEOs, corporations and politicians who exemplify the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge.
This is the 10th year that Jobs with Justice (JwJ) has “honored” the person or group that has done the most to “scrooge” workers. And given the current crop of nominees—Bank of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hyatt Hotels, Publix Supermarkets and student loan providers—it looks like it will be a hard decision to pick just one.
You can cast your vote for any of these deserving nominees here. The winner will be announced Dec. 21.
First, there’s Bank of America, which had a hand in the worst of the subprime lending excesses, providing financing to four of the top five largest subprime lenders during the years prior to the crash. Among them, these four firms issued more than $320 billion in subprime loans from 2005-2007. As a result of these kinds of abuses, Bank of America helped crash the economy and then accepted bailouts and backstops totaling $199.2 billion.
Workers Rally to Shut Down School of Americas
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Hundreds of union members joined religious and human rights activists in a vigil and rally outside the gates of the School of the Americas (SOA) last weekend to demand that it be closed.
Graduates of the school, operated by the U.S. Department of Defense at Fort Benning, Ga., have been linked to human rights violations and suppression of popular movements in the Americas, according to the activist group SOA Watch.
Many targets of assassination and torture in Latin America are trade unionists. More union members are killed each year in Latin America than in the rest of the world combined, primarily due to extreme anti-worker violence in Colombia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation.
Union members, young activists and religious groups joined in a labor caucus Nov. 22 and heard Colombian trade union members describe the dangerous conditions they live under daily. When 14 Colombian unionists were in the United States receiving training through the AFL-CIO over the past two months, four of their union colleagues back home were killed.
Tomato Workers Score Huge Victory
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In a huge win for farm workers, one of the nation’s top food service and management companies reached an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve working conditions and give a raise directly to Florida’s tomato harvesters.
The pact between Compass Group North America and the CIW calls for the company to pay an additional 1.5 cents per pound for all the tomatoes it purchases each year, with 1 cent per pound passed directly from the supplier to the workers. The agreement boosts workers’ wages from 50 cents for a 32-pound bucket to 82 cents per bucket, a 64 percent increase.
This is the first agreement where the money goes directly to the workers. Previous agreements called for the money to go into an escrow account.
